ESPN published an article looking at Take-Two Interactive taking over the WWE video game franchise for the next five years as part of its 2K Sports brand. As noted earlier, THQ was forced to sell the assets after declaring bankruptcy and not being able to sell the company to Clearlake Capital Group last month.
Casey Collins, the WWE Executive VP of Consumer Products, admitted that it was nice to speak with different industry leaders during the bidding process to get their take on the business going forward. Collins also discussed being impressed with what Take-Two has done with the “NBA 2K” franchise, and said that “they’d be a perfect partner.”
WWE’s first game under the Take-Two umbrella will be titled “WWE 2K14.” Take-Two hired key employees from THQ as part of the agreement to work on the game with their design team. Take-Two also agreed to work with longtime WWE games developer Yukes from Japan for the game, and plan to release it in the fall.
“Everything that we’ve done with NBA is what we’re trying to contribute to WWE,” said 2K Sports VP of Marketing Jason Argent. “So the growth that you’ve see in the NBA franchise from the authenticity in the game to the excitement of the marketing that surrounds it is all something we expect to add to the franchise. We’re going to create one hell of a video game franchise.”
Footage of What WWE 14 Would Looks Like Had Rockstar Taken Over WWE Video Games…
